The internet has become an indispensable information tool. However, the abundance of information available as websites through the internet is of limited use if it is not classified and ranked in a manner which is useful to a particular user. The internet traditionally requires the user to provide the judgment necessary to elicit useful information from the totality of information available through an internet search.
There has been a considerable amount of research in the area of searching, including searching that comprises ranking or review feature. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 2002/0046203 to Siegel et al. teaches an internet search engine system which ranks results based on ranking of the research results by independent reviewers. The user may specify the type of review whose critical reviews are of interest for a particular search. However, the system lacks a formal process to validate and verify the credentials and claims of each registered user, and the rating system requires reliance on a third-party search engine.
PCT Patent Application No. PCT/NL00/00966 to Vennemann et al. describes a method of collecting and supplying information to a searcher by computer means. According to the method taught, information is collected in response to a search request. The search results are reviewed by experts before presentation to the searcher in a structured order. However, the collected information is limited according to the predetermined expert criteria.
PCT Patent Application No. PCT/US2003/023046 to Petras et al. describes a system for collecting users'opinions with respect to database contents such as internet search results, and permitting selection of search results screened according to such user opinions.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,214 to Lang et al. teaches an internet search engine system which filters search results by a relevancy ranking on the basis of evaluation by other internet users who have previously considered the results of the internet search. Like many other approaches, the system proposed in this patent considers every user as equals.
Further, PCT Patent Application No. PCT/US2004/030028 to Curtiss et al. (U.S. Application No. 2005/0060312) describes a method for ranking results, including determining one or more metric values for a news source. The system proposed in this patent application proposes multiple ways to take measurements of a specific news source. However, the metrics focus more on the magnitude and size of the news source compared to the quality of the stories produced by the source. Thus the process could place a bias towards the more established and used news sources, regardless of the quality of the articles written by the source. Although human opinion is referred to as a factor in the proposed rankings, given the number of other metrics proposed in the patent application, human opinion would likely be a small factor.
What is needed is an internet search engine and associated website capable of providing results ranked according to multiple criteria, including ratings by human critics having expertise in addition to ratings by ordinary users.